


Haunt

by nickelsissocool



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Pre-Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 20:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7816876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickelsissocool/pseuds/nickelsissocool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is dead. Against all expectations, John Watson is fine, just fine.<br/>(Except for the part where he's not.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunt

**Author's Note:**

> Is this fic over two years late? Yes. Am I sorry? No.  
> Enjoy the throwback angst.

Against all expectations, John Watson is fine, just fine.

Sherlock is ( _was_ , John corrects himself) his best friend and John would follow him anywhere, so John follows Sherlock to the morgue at St. Bart’s, like he had so many times before. Only this time the body on the slab is Sherlock’s.

It’s the wrong mix of infuriating and hilarious, but there’s Molly – sweet, dependable Molly – gently explaining that Sherlock had requested that she conduct his autopsy and that, as per his wishes, his body was to be donated for science. John nods in all the right places, but his mind is stumbling over the image of an empty box, an empty plot, and a void that cannot ever be filled. It feels a little like all the air has left his lungs.

John sits there outside the morgue for what seems like hours. John won’t tell anyone, but part of him is still waiting for Sherlock.

When Lestrade comes – and John knew he would, either for him or for Sherlock – he’s accompanied by Donovan, standing awkwardly off to the side. John opens his mouth to say God knows what – _you should have defended him, you should have believed him, you’re the reason he’s_ – something, anything to make this better, but the words don’t come because there are no words to fix this.

They take his statement.

They don’t ask what Sherlock said over the phone call.

He doesn’t tell them.

“He wasn’t a fraud,” John manages, and it feels like the most honest thing he could say.

Donovan is looking at him with pitying eyes, like he’s the victim of a horrible prank. Lestrade doesn’t answer; he looks past John to the morgue door, jaw locked and his eyes more tired than John has ever seen before.

“You know,” Lestrade murmurs, “I told his brother I would look out for him.”

John didn’t say anything – what could he say? Lestrade shakes his head sadly and finally meets John’s gaze, “I believe you because I still believe in him and what he could do. I’ll probably lose my job, but I’ll do my best for him, John, I swear.”

Lestrade squeezes John’s shoulder as he leaves. Donovan turns to follow, but stops and faces John again.

“I’m sorry, yah, I never – ” she falters, turns away, and swivels back again, “He really loved you.”

John has no idea what to do with that.

The intermittent tremor in his left hand comes back the first night at Baker Street after he instinctually makes two cups of tea. John blinks fast, and then goes upstairs to his bed, suddenly feeling too sick and empty inside for any cuppa to fix.

It’s worse after the funeral – it doesn’t even compute for him that it’s _Sherlock’s_ funeral. It doesn’t help that John _knows_ that Sherlock is not in the empty hearse leading the procession of cars, that Sherlock is not being lowered in his coffin, that his body is gone while so much of him lingers in the cracks and hollows of John’s own skin, in the space between John’s fingers, in the corner of John’s lung.

No one from Sherlock’s family is here, which affects John more than he thought. Looking out over the gathered crowd of lingering fans, indebted Yard detectives and clients, John feels like he is the only one here who lost as much as he has.

John is on edge – having to endure furtive glances and the sickening banality of their grief – so when Anderson, of all people, comes up to John babbling about Sherlock’s fall being fake, John finally snaps, punching Anderson in the face.

It doesn’t make him feel any better.

That night, John lies in bed – unable to sleep – trying so carefully to think of _nothing_ , but still expecting to hear a violin concerto at three in the morning, or the soft clink of glass beakers for a late night experiment.

John hates the silence. It’s like glass scratching his bones.

He leaves Baker Street the next day.

He doesn’t call Mrs. Hudson or text Lestrade.

He quits his job at the surgery within a week.

He stops seeing his therapist after a month.

Slowly, John redacts all the parts of his life that Sherlock touched and illuminated –leaving no ties to the life they shared together.

John doesn’t believe in ghosts. But somehow Sherlock keeps bleeding through and haunting him.

The first time it happens, John is on his way to Tesco’s. When he spots the tall man in a long coat, his breath catches, around the name that he has forced down for so long. Before John is aware of what he is doing, he is following the man for one street, two, and then around a corner, and just like that, the man has vanished.

John’s legs choose this moment to give out from under him.

His limp returns with a vengeance as he hobbles back to his new flat.

He has to buy a new cane the next morning.

He spots six more men with long coats and curly, dark hair over the next month. John loses all of them before he can catch up to them.

If the excruciating twinge in his leg isn’t enough, John starts noticing things. At first it’s small things – his new landlord is German ( _accent_ ), the cashier is putting herself through school ( _student ID poking out of her back pocket_ ), Stamford got a raise at work ( _he pays for John’s drinks next time they go out and there is more cash than usual in his wallet_ ), and Harry is drinking again ( _the bar napkin is peeking oh so subtly from her coat pocket_ ).

Then, as he starts deducing more and more, the voice in his head is no longer his own. It says: the cab driver is getting married ( _he is absently tapping a three count beat – a common waltz, obviously – on his dashboard, and he is fiddling with his new engagement ring – he’s not used to it yet_ ), the barkeep has feelings for one of his younger regulars ( _compensating for his age with hair dye to hide his greying hair – the dye evident from the dye stain on the nape of his neck – coincidental, except for the telling fact that he immediately makes her gin and tonic on her arrival – clearly memorized her order – and he under-charges her final tab by over £15_ ), and the single mother ( _single mother, of course, from the amount of groceries she has with her and lack of wedding ring_ ) is taking the tube from a day of shopping in the city ( _based on_ _tube route, and destination, the logical assumption is that she lives in Canning Town_ ) and spoils her youngest son ( _she is carrying a new remote control car – no wrapping, so not a gift for someone else or for a birthday present – and nothing for a girl, even though she has an older daughter – she bought tampons but clearly is in menopause herself – she took off her jacket although it is still rather cold – hot flash, likely_ ).

He doesn’t admit to anyone, least of all himself, that his dreams are not haunted by Afghani deserts and blood, but instead by running down London streets and piercing, blue eyes. He won’t let anyone know that sometimes on the nights when the world is too cold and still and the mist of almost-tears cloud his vision, John can almost hear a voice on the wind, just barely whispering his name. He doesn’t tell anyone that sometimes when he is standing still, oh so still, he can almost feel the pull of someone standing behind him, just visible out of the corner of his eye. And then when he shuts his eyes, taking hard and shallow breaths, he can almost feel that person’s warmth at his back, almost feel the graze of fingers on his shoulder and arm.

For a solid month John can’t leave his new flat because of the voice in his head whispering deductions like a lover, and he can’t walk three blocks without seeing someone who reminds him. He sits in his chair, perfectly still and quiet when Lestrade comes pounding on his door demanding that John come out and eat ( _Mrs. Hudson or Mycroft must have called_ – _Mycroft, more likely, the nosy git_ , the voice deduces). For the hour after Lestrade’s attempted visit, John sits, eyes closed, breathing even, and just _feels_ ; he feels the warmth and presence of the person who is not actually standing soothingly behind him (but who is so real and perfect in John’s mind that to look – and see nothing – would be earth shattering).

John figures this must be what insanity is like.

John occasionally does interviews for magazines and papers. They write him as a wronged lover, the ignorant house-wife, but John doesn’t mind because Sherlock may have been many things, a genius, a madman, a liar, an attention-seeking ex-druggie, a narcissistic twat, a heartless bastard at times, but a fraud he was not. And if John tries hard enough, if he can convince enough people, then John can rest a little better at night – in spite of the glare of all-seeing blue eyes in the shadows.

Suddenly, it’s been almost a year, but it feels longer to John.

One day out of the blue, John finds himself standing outside 221B Baker Street without any real idea of how he came to be there. His feet carry him inside without any input from his carefully blank mind.

Up the stairs he goes, and step-by-step, the pain in his leg throbs dully, blocking out the memories clamoring in his mind.

John takes a deep breath, and with steady hands he unlocks the door to their flat (he always kept the spare – even after he moved out – leaving it deep in his coat pocket). The door swings open and John is assaulted with _Sherlock_ , the sheer magnitude of everything John has tried to ignore these many months of torment.

He heaves a sigh as the ghost of Sherlock that he has been hiding from comes bursting from John’s lungs and fills up the flat. The coat, recovered by Lestrade, hangs by the door, just as John left it the last time he was here, but somehow it looks like it was only worn yesterday.

John reaches out one hand, fingertips just a millimeter from touching the woolen coat, but a jolt of something _wrong_ pulls his fingers back at the last moment like the dark fabric has burned him.

John takes a breath to ground himself, but it was the wrong thing to do because he is instantly assaulted by the scent of the life he has been trying to seal away – the life he had with that brilliant and beautiful man who smelled like rich, old wood, bitter acid, and sweet, stinging metal all at once. And after all these months, despite the heavy dust, it still bloody _smells_ like Sherlock was only here but an hour ago.

A shudder runs down his spine and goosebumps litter the back of his neck. His skin feels too tight, like the blood pounding in his ears wants to burst out.

And his head is spinning, spinning as he can almost swear that out of the corner of his eye he sees someone dark and tall standing just behind him. It’s almost as if the invisible, heavy, weight of a hand is reaching out, reaching to rest on John’s shoulder, but not quite touching. He can almost hear _that_ voice murmuring his name.

It all whispers _home_ , and John shuts his eyes vehemently because _no_ , there isn’t anyone there. Sherlock is gone. Sherlock is dead. John knows what being dead is – he _is_ a doctor after all. Sherlock _has_ to be dead. And John Watson doesn’t – he _can’t_ believe in ghosts. He never has and never will, because he _wants_ to believe, he wants to believe so badly – but he knows that then he spend the rest of his life searching for someone he will never see again.

Part of John feels like screaming.

The other part feels like it’s him this time, falling from Bart’s, hurtling to the ground.

But _no_ , John exhales. He doesn’t believe in ghosts even though he _is_ being haunted by one. _There is no one there_ , John tells himself as he reopens his eyes. _He is dead_ , John repeats as he turns from the empty room, ignoring the catch in his throat. _He is never coming back_ , John thinks as he leaves the flat, fighting to keep the bile down, his limp raging as he descends the too-long flight of stairs. John leaves Baker Street, never looking back.

And John Watson is fine, just fine.


End file.
